Summery: Sari's life is not what it could have been. Her father has died and his company has collapsed due to bad management, leaving Sari with nothing but a life on the streets where she has grown in unexpected ways, in order to survive. Can anything save Sari from a cold lonely death on the streets, and help her discover what she really is?

A/N: Welcome to chapter one. I hope you enjoy this Fic, and submit lots of reviews!

Chapter One: Did we take a wrong turn somewhere in life?

It was late at night in Detroit, and the city was surprisingly peaceful for once, even with the large amount of people burning the nighttime oil for business or pleasure in the city center. For those that lived away from the downtown area, and in the suburbs, it was quite. Most folks were asleep, with the exception of the few parents sitting at the kitchen table in the dark waiting for their oh-so-dead teens to return from where ever they were.

However, away from the downtown and the suburbs and deep into the industrial district, there was someone who was without a doubt NOT asleep, or remotely happy no matter how they tried to be. This someone happened to live in an abandoned factory, which now served as an intimidating warehouse, what with its stoic facade of stone and metal and surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Through a dusty window, a glimmer of orange light could be seen.

Inside, a small figure garbed in discarded clothing and wrapped in a raggedy blanket huddled closer to the fire that burnt inside a half-drum and half-halfheartedly tossed a wad of magazines into it, watching them burst into flame. This figure was Sari Sumdac, child of eight years and former daughter of one Issac Sumdac, now deceased for a year-and-a-half after a sudden and mysterious onset of heart cancer claimed his life. Later, doctors had diagnosed it as having been repeated exposure to an unshielded energy source that had been the cause.

Not that the little details really mattered to her now, Sari had other things on her mind and a proverbial storm-cloud hung over the child’s head. To one side was the remains of her once hated Tutor Bot, built by her father who for some reason did not think to just send her to some public or even a private school. She had salvaged him from a junk pile, along with what remained of her robotic pet Sparkplug, who had a special place on a scruffy baker’s rack. But they were both so banged up for some reason that she could never get them to work again.

So she kept them with her, a need for a reminder of her happy past. The metal and plastic that made up both the robots had been all but stripped away and lost leaving metal bones and torn wiring on broken servos. She stood up, ignoring the pang of pain in her stomach and making a mental note that she needed more food, and looked around her home. It was the same as always, her little living space being a corner in the main part of the factory, and surrounded by tall metal racks filled with countless robots all of various designs and was made up of whatever she could scavenge. The bed was taken from behind a home goods store, most likely thrown out because of the large coffee stain on it. A baker’s rake was stolen from a closed bakery that was going to be demolished anyways and served to hold her sparse belongings. She could always live in one of the smaller rooms, if they weren't full of robots as well.

Clutching her blanket around her shoulders, she made her way to the front of the factory and opened the smaller normal sized door, forgoing the larger garage one considering she didn't feel like she had the energy to try and lift the thing. Looking out and up, she idly eyed the moon and ran a few numbers in her head.

“Hmph. Stupid astronomy lessons say that its sometime around 1 o’clock. Guess Dad was right about the Tutor Bot teaching me something useful at least. He would freak if he knew I was up this late.”

Turning around, she closed the door and headed back to her little corner and curled up on the mattress, deciding to get some sleep while she could. She needed to be up early tomorrow to try and steal some more food before she starved.

But she could not; as hard as she tried to sleep she stayed wide-awake and alert, and nothing she did was changing that. Getting back up, she made her way into the deeper parts of the abandoned factory, to her special place where she could find a hint of comfort and solace. Coming to the large cast iron door of her special place, she pulled as hard as she could, her eight-year old frame straining to try and move the large metal door; and with a horrible shriek from rusty metal the door gave, slamming open suddenly and knocking her to the cold cement floor with a grunt.

Getting back up and dusting herself off, she walked in, to the room that held the stored contents of her father’s lab. She sat in the over sized chair, where her father used to sit while he worked, and tried to remember the good times with him, before this had happened. But there were so few, so little memories of the good times with her father that she broke down again into a fit of dry sobs in her seat. The sobbing soon changed however, into an angry shouting as other memories came back as well.

“Why? Why did this have to happen! Why did he... why did he have to die?! It’s not fair! And Powell! That slime ball couldn't leave it alone could he?! He just had to come along and ruin my life even more! First he came up with this stupid excuse that I didn't exist, and then he even got paperwork to prove it! He took everything Dad left me, my home, the company, everything! All because I don't exist!”

She tore the keyboard from its slot in the computer and threw it across the room, where it collided with something and made a solid ‘clang’ noise. After a moment of panting, she calmed down, and turned around, walking over to retrieve the keyboard and looking up at what she pitifully called her friend.

Staring back down at her was a fearsome visage of metal and crystal red optics, one of the many remains of her father’s work. Or at least that was what she knew. With the keyboard in hand like a precious treasure, she sat at the base of the disembodied robot's head in silence, for no other reason than to relax under the watchful eye of her guardian. After a moment she quietly stood back up and placed the keyboard back in its niche on her father’s desk and left, to once again try and sleep, this time with some success.

A few hours of restless sleep later, and she was getting ready to leave on a hunt for some food to get her through the next few days. She had learned early on after her father’s death and her coming to live on the streets – thanks to Powell – that she could not store food for a long time in the factory, and with nothing else she could do to keep it fresh had taken to stealing it on an almost daily basis. But strangely enough, she had her father to thank for being able to eat at all. Sari chuckled a little as she remembered complaining to him as to why exactly a 7-year old needed to be taught advanced computer sciences by their Tutor Bot. She had actually asked that about a lot of her lessons, now that she thought about it. She still had been childish then, and maybe a bit spoiled. She would give anything to be back in the tower with her father, being forced to learn things most kids didn't till collage.

But now she knew better. She might only be 8-and-some years old, but she was a lot more mature then she had been before. A few of the things she had learned actually proved useful. The rest was still mind-bending garbage though. She could swear her dad had been trying to turn her into a geek or something. Those advanced computer sciences lessons translated well into hacking, and Sari was now a talented child data wizard. A salvaged portable interface computer from the stash of her father’s things, and she was ready to take on the world. And after the first few times, she had gotten a technique for breaking and entering the countless Auto-Stores, right before the robotic stores opened. During the night, the computers that ran them diverted processing power from the security systems to the systems needed to get the store running each day, and that left them vulnerable to her. She had learned to hack into the computers then, the need for food and the lack of money driving her to learn how to use her lessons.

Without a word, she gathered up everything and shoved it in a simple backpack and grabbed a ragged hoodie to pull over her clothing. She swung the backpack over her shoulder, and left the factory to head to the nearest store, a half-hour’s walk away and on the edge between the Detroit suburbs and the industrial district, with the docks not too far away.

A while later, she came around the back of the store and could hear the machines as they started to warm up for the day through the brick walls and approached the back door. Looking around, she tried to find a data-port she could access, and once one was found she tricked the door into opening and disabling the remaining security systems. But Sari knew this was the easy part, and now it got hard. And as hard as she tried, she could not help it as an edge of fear and nervousness set it.

As soon as the door was open, she was inside and grabbed a few of the recycled plastic bags kept in stock and started grabbing what she could from the storage units, cramming everything into the bags hoping to get enough last her the next day or two. She mumbled to herself, urging herself on. The last thing she wanted was for the systems to finish booting up and switch back to security mode while she was still inside. Either that, or something coming along and finding her here.

“Come on, come on! No time to be slow now!”

Finishing up and now with a full set of bags in each hand, she looked around to make sure there was nothing left that she wanted to grab, or that there was anything left to tell the disconcerting eye that she had been here. Turning around to the doorway, she was shocked however, to come face to face with the angry face and voice of a man dressed in a delivery outfit, obviously here to restock the store.

“What do you thing you’re doing here?! Come here you brat!”

The man lunged at her, and she barely dodged to the side of the room. Taking out her stun gun on instinct and dropping the bags she shot the man in the back with a bolt of concentrated non-lethal energy and watched him drop to the floor like a spastic puppet without strings, as the man jerked and twisted as the blast played havoc with his nervous system. Panicking, Sari grabbed the dropped bags and ran out into the city and past the truck that the man had most likely come in. She ran without paying attention to where she was going, just wanting to get out of the area as the realization that she had attacked and hurt a man sunk in. Ever since her father had died she had lived on the streets, stealing and working to stay alive, as a person that did not exist as she had been told… but never doing something like this.

Before long her scared legs had carried her far from her home, and to a beach by the lake where she took a moment and calmed herself. She sat down on a dune in the middle of the beach and started to think about what she would do now. If that man took the time to report her theft and attack on his person, then someone might actually make an effort in finding her, and the last thing she wanted was to end up in some Juvenile Hall if she could. She really had no idea what would happen, since she legally “didn't exist,” as Powell had so smugly told her. While she sat, the dune suddenly shifted, and Sari found herself tossed from her perch.

Looking back at it, she watched as the sandy bump she slid off from fell away and – to her surprise again – revealed a large and slanted marked box. Carefully setting the bags down she started to examine the box, her eight-year old mind getting the better of her and making her forget the lessons about the snoopy cat and how it had ended. The box was strangely cube-like while not being cube-like, and Sari cursed not having paid attention to geometry class for once so she would know what to call it. The box was lightly colored, a light tan in appearance almost with deeper colored lines of blue or aqua running across the surface.

On each side there was a handle, and in the middle there appeared to be some sort of latch or some other such thing. Wondering what was inside she tried to open it, only to fail monumentally and end up with sore fingers. Sari decided to try and take it back with her, but wondered how she was ever going to get it back to the factory. The box was bigger then she was, and looked heavy enough to crush her if she tried to lift it by herself. Looking around she found she was in luck, for there was an old flat bed trolley on a nearby dock that was large enough to carry the box, and even had a mechanized winch to pull it up and onto the trolley.

After a time wrestling with the trolley to get it onto the beach and some clever work, she had managed to get the box on the trolley and up to the road. She spent the next span of time moving through the city, avoiding people and bots, not wanting to gather attention towards her or her cargo lest someone try to take it away, and by the time she had gotten back to the factory it was dark. She left the bags of food and the cube outside, and carefully looked around the factory, not wanting to be caught unaware by someone. After she was satisfied that there was no one but her and the robots, she dragged everything inside and to the room with her father’s equipment.

She set the food by the fireplace on her way by, and continued onwards to the lab room. Once again she struggled with the door, and after getting it open again she dragged the cube and trolley inside. Leaving it in the middle of the room, Sari started searching for something she could use to open the cube in one of the many crates that littered the room, and inadvertently came across her old key card. She was about to throw it away, when she looked at the card and then the cube. The card’s job was to open stuff right? Then maybe it would open up the cube. Holding the card in hand she reached out towards the box…

A/N2: All Copyrights belong to Hasbro and other Companies that are affiliated or own Transformers.